Operations

Operations are features of a Class or other element that represent the behavior or services an element supports. For a Customer Class, UpdateCustomerName and GetCustomerAddress can be operations. Operations have several important characteristics, such as type, scope (visibility), static, abstract and notes.

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How to Access Operations

If an element supports operations (typically Classes and Interfaces), the right-click context menu contains the Operations menu item. Select this to open the Operationsdialog. Alternatively, press ( F10 ) .

Elements with operations (typically Classes) display their features in diagrams in the manner shown below. Operations display in the second compartment of properties in colored text - the default color is dark green (for example,Finalize() : void). Some characteristics display in shorthand form; for example, static displays as $, abstract as *.

Operations in the project Browser

In the Project Browser, Classes with operations have their features collected beneath them, each preceded by a pink box (). Right-click on an operation and select the Operation Properties context menu option to open the Operations dialog and edit details for the feature.

From the Project Browser, you can drag operations onto new elements to give them the same operations.

Notes:

If the parent element provides source or target roles for a connector, the connector can be attached to a specific operation. See the Connect to Element Feature topic